Looking back through my archives, I think this piece from last December – when Dayton “won” the recount – was pretty dead-on.

The Legislature and the Governor passed a budget last night.

Downsides

The K12 Budget Shift:  The budget “borrows”  money from the next year’s K12 budget.  It’s just plain bad policy – but such was the price of “compromise”.   Naturally, the GOP’s good faith is met by DFL perfidy; though they and the governor demanded, indeed whined about “compromise”, now that the deal is signed the DFL (and their de-facto management company, “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”) is trying to spin it, hoping people don’t notice the fact that the shift is smaller than the one in Governor Dayton’s original budget.

Having To Listen To Thissen And Bakk: Paul Thissen’s sound bite, from the floor overnight, claimed that the GOP was “leaving four billion dollars in debt for future generation”.  Is there any way someone can glitter this hamster?   Money that was requested as part of the bureaucracy’s forecast, that is not spent, is not a debt.

Wading Out Of The Swamp Of DFL Chanting Points; From Blois Olson’s Morning Take, the DFL has marshalled its chanting points:

• “This is the most reckless and irresponsible budget in state history.  This is a beg, borrow and steal budget that just kicks the can down the road and leaves our children billions of dollars in debt”  Sounds like Algore is writing for them today.  This is what you get for “compromising” with the DFL.  All the more reason to get out and win this next election in a big way.  I’m feeling better about that today.
• “Rather than asking millionaires to pay their fair share of taxes, Republicans are instead choosing to borrow billions of dollars from our schools while leaving our children and grandchildren billions of dollars in debt”.   For a few months.  And hey, I’m fine with never doing that again.  Since it was a key part of Dayton’s budget, that’s another “compromise” that needs to be reached.
• “Republicans can no longer claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility”  The DFL is trying to  make people think “raising taxes in the middle of the recession so that the machinery of government can stay fat and happy” is “responsble”.  It’s a crime against the language.
• “This budget spends billions of dollars we don’t have, and simply puts the state’s bills on a credit card”.  Yep.  One that has to be paid off early next year.   Not a great idea, but survivable.
• “I’m disappointed that Republican’s refusal to compromise resulted in such a fiscally irresponsible budget solution, but I respect Gov. Dayton for doing everything in his power to end this shutdown and get Minnesotans back to work” Five will get you ten Dayton’s a one-term governor.
• ‘Unfortunately, we will be paying for the Republicans’ beg, borrow, and steal budget for decades to come.”  But I’m guessing we’ll be as short as specifics on that as we were on specifics for Dayton’s “budgets”.

Upsides

Reforms: King Banaian’s Sunset Commission made it into the final cut.   The commission – which will shut down government agencies that have outlived their usefulness (or, initially, never had any) is now law.

News on other reforms later today and/or tomorrow.

The Tax Conveyor Belt Is Closed: The DFL banked on being able to browbeat the GOP into keeping “Business as Usual”.   The idea that government must be kept fat and happy at all costs, no matter how the rest of us are doing, was finally blunted.  Not defeated – it would have been better to have gotten a $32 billion budget with no shifting and no borrowing from the Tobacco blackmail fund – but blunted.  The bureaucracy had best learn that the DFL’s browbeating is obsolete.

The HHS Budget Elevator Is Closed:  Health and Human Services spending has had one of the most corrosive features in state politics; an automatic increase in funding.  If anyone suggested reducing the increase, the DFL immediately trotted out single mothers and homeless people to attack the “decrease”, which was in fact merely a smaller increase than the automatic increase formula.  That automatic increase has been repealed.

Outstate Gets It: The metro base that put Dayton in office is in full dudgeon – what else?   But Governor Dayton’s abrupt switch on the budget last week shows, I think, that outstate, even key DFL constituencies were un-thrilled with the DFL’s case.   While some DFLers are saying this shutdown will lead to a return of the Legislature to DFL control, I’m thinking it’ll be neutral at worst and – given that redistricting will favor the GOP as well – maybe a slight gain.  To sum it up – it was the people who voted for Dayton who for the most part even noticed the shutdown.   At worst, they will vote even more vigorously DFL in the next elections.

The Twin Cities media have largely been dutiful stenographers during the shutdown, carrying the DFL’s message pretty much verbatim while gundecking the GOP pretty consistently.

Let’s let all that slide for the moment.  We’ll come back to it, naturally.

But let’s talk for a moment about the “Old” Twin Cities media’s moldiest meme; that there was once a time when the parties just got along, and agreed to do “what was best for Minnesota”.

It’s baked wind, of course; to the extent things ever worked that way, it’s because the MNGOP used to be both extremely moderate, in the Rockefeller/Stassen mold, and also very weak, especially after Watergate.  So when the Twin Cities Old Media says “they just got along and did what was best for Minnesota”, what they mean was “they shut up and passed a “progresssive”, tax and spend agenda without a whole lot of muss and fuss”.

So let’s accept them at their word for a moment.  Let’s say that they, the old-school, dead-tree media (I’m looking at you, Lori Sturdevant and Doug Grow and Rachel Stassen-Berger) really do believe in that myth, and really think it led to “good government”.

So how does the behavior of Senate Minority (aaah) leader Tom Bakk and House Minority leader Paul Thissen fit into that meme?

The GOP and Governor Dayton had reportedly reached an agreement on June 30 – the day before the shutdown.  The shutdown that had the Twin Cities media wetting its collective pants was minutes away from being averted.  Governor Dayton had agreed to drop tax increases – any of them – from the agreement.

Problem solved?

Until Bakk and Thissen entered the picture – as related by Gary Gross at LFR, with emphasis added?

[State GOP deputy chair Michael] Brodkorb said he could confirm that Sen. Bakk and Rep. Thissen were in the room when Speaker Zellers and Leader Koch returned to say that they’d accept Gov. Dayton’s offer. At that time, Gov. Dayton said that he’d changed his mind and that tax increases had to be part of the final solution.

It’s important to remember that Speaker Zellers and Sen. Koch returned only 45 minutes after Gov. Dayton’s initial offer. The only thing that’d changed was that Sen. Bakk and Rep. Thissen weren’t in the room when Gov. Dayton made his initial offer but they were there when he’d reversed himself.

Let’s make this perfectly clear; it appears that Bakk and Thissen, after spending the entire session lighting farts in their offices (*), coming out periodically to wag their fingers on Almanac and heckle the GOP’s various plans to their various stenographers the media, did exactly one substantive thing during the entire session; scupper a settlement two weeks ago.

It’s pretty clear that they believe they could play the shutdown for their political benefit in 2012, and get that benefit on the back of state employees, contractors, the service-using public, and those that depend on the state  for whatever reason.

Brodkorb then said that “The only thing that Sen. Bakk and Rep. Thissen had done since the start of the session was cash paychecks. You can quote me on that.”

With pleasure.

When will the Minnesota Media raise its collective eyebrow over Bakk, Thissen and the DFL’s exploitation of this shutdown?  The region’s conservative blogs have done everything but engrave the story on the back of a “Society of Professional Journalists” award and walk the story into the Strib’s office.

It’s clear at this point that if Thissen and Bakk could tie defective strollers to the GOP, they’d both roll prams full of infants down the Capitol steps, with cameras rolling and the Strib’s editorial staff pondering with mock sincerity  “why don’t the Republicans just compromise and fight Big Stroller?”

(*) Figuratively and rhetorically speaking.  I have no idea if anyone lit a single fart, and if they did, it’s none of my business.  It’s a figure of speech implying sloth, negligence, and passive-aggressive idleness, and as such it’s richly, if disgustingly, appropriate.

At around 11ish, Governor Dayton launched the special session to bang out a new state budget.

The good news;  while the MNGOP, and conservatives, are unhappy with the fact that we’re “borrowing” $1.4 Billion more than the state has in revenues (from the next biennium’s revenues), the compromise seems likely to include some things that were “hills to die on”, rhetorically speaking, for conservatives.

The big ones, for me and many other conservatives: Zero Based Budgeting and King Banaian’s Sunset Commissions; some sort of move toward Voter ID would be great as well.

It’s high time you called your legislators – both GOP and, if you live in a swing-y district, the DFL ones as well.  They need to know where the people stand; goodness knows the Unions will have their people lighting up the switchboards.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes about the bonding bill that is one of Mark Dayton’s demands to end his shutdown.

It’s infuriating.

Naturally, the Star Trib editors praise the bonding bill, saying “Not all government borrowing is created equal.”

They’re exactly correct, of course. Sometimes government borrows money to build unnecessary buildings that benefit a tiny few; sometimes it borrows money to build public improvements that benefit hundreds of thousands. This bonding bill is almost entirely the former.

This bill is not slated to pay for a Vikings stadium – sorry, Zigi.

But some of the spending is almost as misguided:

New buildings at the U of M and St. Cloud State. Should have come from the school budget via capital funding or alumni fundraising, like any private school would have to do, not a separate state-wide funded bonding bill.

Civic center upgrades to Rochester, St. Cloud and Mankato. These are local projects to benefit local communities – they should raise the money locally, not by a state-wide funded bonding bill.

And this part:

Development of more mass transit corridors in the Twin Cities. “Corridors” reads LIGHT RAIL which benefits (if anybody), local residents, not state-wide population and therefore should be funded locally (or not at all).

And there you go.

Why shouldn’t these things be decided, and paid for, locally rather than by state and metro-wide planning bodies?

Here’s the only line in the article with which I agree:

Bonding is an appropriate and desirable practice when it allows for investment in the infrastructure and amenities that will pay economic dividends in the long run. But it’s a travesty when it’s used for short-term consumption and leaves the future bereft.

True; sadly, the editors cannot distinguish between adding lanes to 35W versus adding The Mark Dayton Wing to the Mankato Civic Center.

Is this bonding bill enough of a stinker to scuttle the budget deal? No, probably not. It’s as infuriating to see the Governor hold up the entire state for pure pork as to see the GOP go along with it. But the enemy of good is perfect, and although this deal isn’t perfect, it’s good enough for now.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

It may well be good enough – depending on the reforms that get through the process.  Reportedly, Zero-Based Budgeting and the Sunset Commission are on the bubble – which, beyond any set of financial figures, are the big goals of this legislature for conservatives.

As we kick off the special session sometime this week, probably, Gary Gross at LFR tallies up winners and losers from the regular session.

Business?  They get a draw:

Minnesota businesses still pay too high an income tax but at least it isn’t getting worse. With this settled for at least another 2 years, businesses can breath a sigh of relief.

Gary counts coup for the legislative freshmen, and a few upperclasspeople who just plain got the message:

Steve Gottwalt and Dave Thompson emerged as the next generation of GOP leaders thanks to Sen. Thompson’s stout-hearted defense of conservative principles and Rep. Gottwalt’s seizing the moment to push Gov. Dayton into settling the shutdown. These gentlemen deserve high praise for being great spokesters/legislators for conservative principles.

King Banaian and Keith Downey are winners because they stood their ground on important reforms to state government’s makeup and King’s priority-based budgeting reform of the budgeting process. These gentlemen have proposed legislation that would change how government operates and how it spends money. These aren’t tiny considerations.

I’m looking – and I’m saying this out of hope as much as expectation – to the Freshmen to take great advantage of the out-year session.  I think by the time this budget deal is done, the GOP stock is going to be a strong “buy and hold”.  Yes, I’m biased; with good reason, I think.

And I’m with Gary here:

Speaker Zellers and Leader Koch deserve credit for keep the troops unified. It wasn’t difficult picturing scenarios where moderates could abandon the GOP on this or that vote. That they didn’t is a testimony to their whip operations and their leadership.

Koch and Zellers were at the business end of a regional media that, when they could be bothered to report at all, were hostile to the point of scandalousness, but for the fact that that same media also decides on what is or is not a “scandal” outside the wonk class.  And Gary’s right; they held the caucus together.  To be fair to previous GOP leaders, more of this class was in St. Paul on a mission than some of the previous classes.  To be realistic, pressure is pressure.

The biggest loser was Gov. Dayton. He lost on his signature issue. Initially, Gov. Dayton wanted to raise taxes on the rich. After getting defeated on that, he tried settling for shaking down whoever he could shake down. Both attempts were defeated.

That’s the crux, so far, as we head into the special session; while the GOP didn’t get a perfect 100 – I’d say 75 – an honest appraisal of Dayton as of last Friday had to say “20” to you.

You know the DFL is reeling; it was the height of cynicism to see the DFL’s minions in the media demanding compromise on Wednesday, and on Friday saying that the GOP giving the governor his putative spending figure was “borrow-and-spend”.

Further proof that “compromising” with the DFL is always a lousy idea.

The budget deal’s not done yet; it remains to see if the July 14 compromise will get through the special session that, we are told, is upcoming.

But I’ll suggest that we can learn the following lessons so far:

You Can Never “Compromise” With The DFL: Remember three days ago?  When the leftybloggers and the media (pardon the redundancy) were on demanding “compromise?”  How “Governor Dayton has already compromised, so the MNGOP needs to”, even though the GOP caucus had already gone four billion hard dollars above their original hard goal, and Dayton’s “compromise” was a couple billion in vapor money that exists, in government terms, only on paper.   Still – “compromise” was the word.  “Everyone needs to grow up and learn to compromise” was the chanting point for weeks.

And now that Dayton accepted the deal, what are the leftyblogbuildup saying?

“It’s teh GOP’s budjet!”

In dealing with the DFL, you have to remember that they will do their best to use everything you say or do against you in the court of public opinion.  It is a fact that while they own the governor’s office, we have to compromise some.

That just means we have to extend our control of the House and Senate to be able to override his vetoes next election – which is a tough goal, but doable, especially given the demographic collapse of the state’s DFL strongholds – and, most importantly, winning the Governorship and the state offices back in 2014.  The DFL only compromises for two reasons; when they can turn it against the GOP, or when they have no other choice short of being crushed.

The goal?  Give them no choice other than being crushed.  We’ll work on that at the polls.

This Is Not Your Father’s MNGOP:  The GOP of 20 years ago would have caved in weeks ago, to avoid being called nasty names.  The GOP of 20 years ago didn’t have the stomach for a serious fight, and even if they did, they were largely a “moderate” party, not a conservative one.

Someone tell Arne Carlson; that GOP is dead and gone, forever and ever, and I’ll whiz on its grave.

This year, the GOP majority was new; there were more Republican freshmen in the Senate than there had been GOP senators in the previous session.  And they stood against the usual array of obstacles – the Strib, WCCO, the unions, the bureaucracy, all of Alita Messinger’s and the Rockefeller family’s millions in smear money – and, unlike the GOP of 1990, hung on.

The unspoken hope; that the GOP will take the experience to heart in the next session; knowing that all of the unions’ screeching and all of “Alliance For A Better Minnesota’s” smearing and all of Mark Dayton’s phumphering and all of the Star-Tribune’s dutiful, slanted stenography aren’t going to hurt them.  Next time, when they need to get tough with the DFL minority, they’ll have been through the worst the DFL has to offer, and they’ll stick to their guns.

Our Education System Needs Work: I was listening to “Davis and Emmer” this morning, on the lesser talk station.  They had just finished an interview with MNGOP Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb, in which Michael explained that the “$35 Billion” budget is really just one among many budgets – the “General Fund” – that the state runs, which total $60 Billion every two years among them.

Davis started sounding frustrated; after Michael got off the air, he said (paraphrasing closely) “it all sounds like gobbledygook”.

Now, something can sound like “gobbledygook” for one of two reasons:

1. The reasoning, facts, logic and English usage are indecipherably bad: Think most leftyblogs.
2. You just don’t understand what the speaker is saying:  The person telling you the “gobbledigook” is explaining things adequately, but you have no basis in knowledge to understand it. (Think most leftyblogs when you try to explain basic concepts like “economic liberty” and “humor” and “sex”).

…or some combination of the two.

When it comes to state budgets, I’ve always been pretty much #2; until recently, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.   I’m like one of those people who looks at the daily Dow Jones results, and thinks that’s the barometer of the economy, even though it just represents one measure of it.

Likewise with the state budget.  The General Fund – the one where Dayton asked for $38 Billion, the GOP started at $30, and that will be right around $34 when all is said and done for the next two years – is just one of several budgets totalling about $60 billion every two years.

I know this – but it’s a recent thing.  You have to want to learn this stuff to learn it.  And most people don’t.

And who’s fault is that?  Beyond our own, anyway?  Our education system, and our media (which can’t be bothered to explain it), and yes, Bob Davis and Tom Emmer, who go on the air without knowing it – and, for that matter, me, who has done the same until recently.

Perfect Is Still And Always The Enemy Of Good Enough:  I actually heard a Republican on the Davis and Emmer show calling in to say “we got beat”.  The fact is, until we have a veto-proof majority, or better yet control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the Legislature, politics is going to be a matter of compromise.   Our legislators did the best they could, and it could have been – and for most of the past forty years, has been – much worse.   The lesson?  We need complete control – and there is a large, well-funded, powerful bunch of interests who will be doing their best to prevent that, so we’ve got our work cut out for us (which will make it all the more fun to achieve!).

There is a current in Twin Cities conservatism that if you don’t get everything you want, right away, it’s the same as “losing”.   There is a certain talk show host at a lesser talk station, a good friend of mine, whose line this seems to be.

By that logic, the reform of Minnesota’s handgun carry laws wasn’t a victory; it was seven defeats (and, finally, a win).    But that’s a ludicrous way to look at it; it’s the end result that matters, not the fact that the struggle took some time.

It’s not that we can waste a lot of time, or grow complacent, or put the hard work that goes along with changing our smug, entitled government machine off for another time; far from it.  But you have to take a longer view, and learn some patience, as well; we made a good start.   We’ll get further next year; the DFL’s minions may not know they got beat, but their leadership sure does.

The DFL is spinning like mad – and not very effectively.  Let’s not do their work for them.

———-

Is it the victory we wanted?  Nope.  Is it better than the alternative, had we not won last November?  Hell yeah.

Don’t panic, people.  This is a marathon, not a wind sprint.

As part of its passive-aggressive, “let the peasants feel the pain” approach to the shutdown, the Dayton Administration shut down all of the state’s publicly-visible databases.

Including that of the Campaign Finance Board.  I know this, because whenever the Strib tries to pass some businessman or private citizen off as a “non-partisan” commentator on politics, a quick glance at the CFB usually shows that they are committed DFLers.

We can’t do that now.

Now, since most of Dayton’s campaign money, including the campaign to justify the shutdown – and make no mistake, it is a campaign, being paid for by liberals with deep pockets, like Alita Messinger and the rest of the Dayton family – is being paid for by what amount to campaign contributions, and those that “regulate”, or at least transcribe, these contributions are out of the office (or at least not maintaining databases), doesn’t that give Democrat groups ample chance to…

…well, cheat?

I mean, how would we know?

KSTP is running an online preference poll on the shutdown.

Get in there and vote.

Early and often.

The local media – who have mostly been serving as stenographers for Governor Dayton so far in this shutdown – have finally found the human interest story they needed.

There’s good news and bad news:

The state shutdown means Miller-Coors will have to stop selling beer in Minnesota.

State officials have told the company, it must come up with a plan to remove it’s 39 brands of beer from shelves and in bars in a matter of days.

Lack of Miller and Coors products will be a good thing for the regional beer scene.  But this isn’t about taste – this is about Governor Dayton’s passive-aggressive tactics hitting some Minnesotans where they live; in their alcoholic hazes.

The company failed to renew it’s brand license with the state before the shutdown. Each alcohol brand needs to pay a 30 dollar brand license fee. That fee is good for 3 years.

Actually, a TV news story notes that Miller claims to have sent the check for the renewal.   Miller Brewing’s brand license renewal fees were apparently not processed before the government shutdown – which is well in line with the Dayton Administration’s passive-aggressive approach to this entire fracas.

Without the license, Miller-Coors cannot sell in the state.

And there’s your human interest angle right there.  The TV stations have been trooping into the bars, interviewing a Cantina Band full of sodden souses to grumble “Itsh time for the gummamunt to get itsh jerb done!”, and in one case, a puffy fiftysomething north-woods gretel to shriek “You people need to GROW UP and COMPROMISE!”.

The pieces – clearly aimed at  the legislature, rather than the Governor – underscore a key fact of Minnesota political life; so much of it is focused on people who are hammered when they make their voting decisions.

People ask “why is Dayton squiggling so hard to avoid any form of negotiation with the GOP?  He’s clearly beaten; public opinion largely opposes his “all taxes” approach to the deficit, and the GOP isn’t getting browbeaten into submission anymore?”

It makes no sense, if you assume that Mark Dayton is making any kind of decision at all.

So it only makes sense that he’s not making the decisions.

Mark Dayton is a marionette.

Think about it.

He’s A Rental: Mark Dayton had less to do with his own election than any governor in Minnesota history.  He owes his election to four things:

1. An immense infusion of cash from the unions, and liberals with deep pockets, including himself and his family, which funded…
2. …the most toxic, sleazy disinformation campaign in the history of Minnesota politics, which outspent the Emmer campaign by a minimum of 3:1 and foisted upon Minnesotans a drumbeat of half-truths, untruths or thirty-year-old, context-deprived twaddle about Emmer, which combined with…
3. …a suddenly deeply-incurious media that couldn’t bring itself to write about Dayton’s record in the Senate, much less his known issues with alcohol abuse and mental illness, which meant that…
4. …the 43% of Minnesota voters who don’t think very critically about politics didn’t have any of their assumptions challenged.

Let’s face it; Dayton is less a governor than a delivery man for an agenda set by the special interests that helped him into office; the public employees unions, deep-pocketed liberal plutocrats, and the non-profits that feed off the entitlement culture.

And like Dayton, those stakeholders know that…

Progressivism Desperately Needs A Win: It’s been a horrible year for big institutional progressivism.  The Tea Party tsunami in 2010 has rocked “progressive” government in former strongholds like Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, and even New York and California, where the likes of Andrew Cuomo and Jerry Brown have become spending hawks all of a sudden.   And Wisconsin – the home of LaFollette, the buckle in the public employee union belt – was a gut-shot for progressives.  If the progressives’ “support government at all cost” creed can crumble in New York, California and Wisconsin, where is it safe?

Which is why…

Minnesota Is Progressivism’s Last Stand: The prognosis for progressivism isn’t good.  Sure, the GOP suffered setbacks in 2006 and 2008 – precisely because the Bush Administration and its attendant GOP caucuses didn’t act like a conservative government.  The economy is making progressive entitlement programs unsustainable – and, even moreso, undercutting the idea that they must be sustained at the cost of the viability of the sector that pays the taxes.  The conservative parts of the country are growing; the liberal ones are largely shrinking.  And with even the biggest showcases of “progressivism” defecting from the gospel, “progressivism’s” big stakeholders – unions, non-profits, plutocrats and the like – are faced with a stark reality; they need a win to stanch the bleeding.

Those stakeholders put him in office.  They will get their money’s worth.

And as the Administration itself telegraphed weeks ago, they don’t care who they hurt to get it.  Government employees?  Entitlement recipients?  Consumers of “services” like jobs at Canterbury?  All just eggs to be broken for the greater omelet.

So are you a citizen, or are you an egg?

…that the current Minnesota government shutdown is the longest in US history.

Most of the citizens of Minnesota responded by going to work today.

…let me answer the standard-issue DFL chanting point that you read on virtually ever tweet, ad and TV ad the DFL puts out:

“The Republicans want to (do horrible things) to protect millionaires”.

Let’s settle this.

None of us gives a rat’s ass about millionaires.  Bupkes.  Zip.  Nada.

It’s about reforming government.

It’s about stopping the DFL’s spending crazy train.

It’s about making all of those safety net entitlement programs for the elderly and children and unemployed and mentally ill sustainable for the long term. as opposed to the current fiscal time bombs they are.

It’s about making sure that public employees actually have pensions to retire on in thirty years.

It’s about having a state where we don’t have a perennial budget crisis, because the state lives solidly within and below its means – and it’s just fine, because the state is so prosperous its’ “means” are pretty darn formidable.

We oppose government sucking up any more of this state’s viability than it really needs – and by “needs”, I don’t mean “wants”, “covets” or “craves”.   That means taxes on millionaires and the poor – including the DFL’s screechingly regressive gas and cigarette taxes.

…was two pages away from being resolved.

And Dayton is always two pages away from resolving it.

And no matter what the “pain”, he’s going to stay two pages, and no less than two pages, away from resolving it.

Array

About 500 union members – and not much of anyone else – formed a “Downeyville” on the Capitol grounds yesterday.

“Downeyville’s” city government quickly formed a city bureaucracy which hired a unionized workforce to take care of “Downeyville’s” city business.  The unions worked with the city and instituted a comprehensive defined-benefit pension plan for “Downeyville” city workers, with automatic cost of living raises and a n0-questions-asked health insurance.

“Downeyville’s” bills quickly spiralled out of control; taxes surged, and “Downeyville” quickly sent lobbyists (further) up Capitol Hill to demand Local Government Aid – which only inflamed the protesters, because the government is shut down.  Which caused the entire city work force to form another small town – a suburb of “Downeyville”, further up the capitol steps, called “Zellerston”.

The suburb  quickly  took the wealthy population from “Downeyville”, causing the “Downeyville” city government to demand the forming of a “Protest Met Council” to equalize revenues between the two “towns”.  “Zellerston” also formed a unionized city work force, which quickly adopted a defined-benefit pension plan and cadillac health benefits, which quickly drove the city’s budget into the red, causing the city to demand Local Government Aid.  They sent their lobbyist up the hill to the Capitol, where he ot into a fight with “Downeyville’s” lobbyist, getting them both thrown into jail, where their union-paid lawyers (it’s a benefit, hey?) filed suit against each other, both winning multimillion dollar judgments, which spun both cities into crushing debt.

And then the six-o’clock news cycle ended, and the news trucks left, and most of the “population” of both “cities” left, leaving both cities with crushing debts.  Both cities called in union members from other cities, who scheduled a protest…

Oh, yeah – union members were the only people that cared.

But Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, one of several DFL legislators who attended the rally, said he was surprised the shutdown did not yet seem to be resonating with many Minnesotans. “I thought there would be a lot more tension on July 4th,” Hornstein said of the many Fourth of July parades across the state. “I’m surprised.

Of couse, Twitter redounded with warnings from Democrats to Republicans about “tension” to be expected at Fourth of July parades.  Apparently they thought Minnesotans would be up in arms about the shutdown.  Maybe they even tried to see to it – hell, they astroturf eveything else. We just don’t know.

Anyway – while “Downeyville” apparently stiffed as anything but a union pep rally, Hornstein – and by extension, the entire DFL – still has hope:

“But I think the longer this would go on, the public would get concerned,” he said.

AFSCME and SEIU members will be going door to door to union members and registered DFLers to make sure people “get concerned” over the weekend*.

(

I hereby announce the formation of a budget resolution commission.  We shall present recommendations to Governor Dayton and the Legislature to help resolve the budget crisis.

I’d like to note that this commission is better than bi-partisan – it’s tri-partisan!   Beyond that, it actually contains a majority of DFLers.

It includes representatives from the world of alt-media, academia, and politics.

From politics:

• Phil Krinkie, former Republican legislator and current head of the Taxpayers League.
• Vin Weber, former GOP 2nd District US Congressman.
• Randy Kelly, former DFL mayor of Saint Paul.
• Norm Coleman, former DFL mayor of Saint Paul.

From academia,

• King Banaian, former Libertarian Party member, noted economist.
• David Strom, former MNSCU instructor, former liberal Democrat.

From the Alternative Media:

• John Hinderaker, blogger for Powerline, former liberal, and noted lawyer.
• Jeff Rosenberg – liberal blogger from some blog or another.

This commision should be immune from criticism on the grounds of being “extremist conservative”; as noted, most of the members are liberals!

And the commission has issued its report a day ahead of the Carlson/Mondale commission!  The report calls for…:

1. A $27 Billion budget that trims spending back to pre-recession levels.
2. Abolition of several state bureaucracies – the Departments of Education, Development and Economic Development, Human Rights, Housing Finance, Iron Range Resources and Development, the Met Council and the Metro Sports Facilities Commission will be abolished forthwith.  Also, the Sunset Bill (HF2 in the previous legislature) will be adopted in toto, but with all time-times cut in half.
3. Immediate State Hiring Freeze – the state has plenty of workers.
4. Working toward privatizing public schools by 2015.
5. Immediate radical cuts in business taxes, including an immediate two week sales tax holiday and a Business Tax Lottery granting one lucky Minnesota business a complete one-quarter exemption from business income taxes every month.

These recommendations – which, we hasted to remind you, were developed by a commission made up mostly of liberals – are of such obvious common sense that we recommend Governor Dayton adopt them immediately, in the interest of bipartisanship.

Because we’re bipartisan!

The New York Times opts to toss facts under the bus in yesterday’s editorial about the Minnesota Shutdown:

How far will Republican lawmakers go to protect millionaires? Those who think a default on the federal government’s credit seems implausible should take a sobering look at the “closed” signs dotting Minnesota. The Republican Party there readily shut down the state’s government on Friday by refusing to raise taxes on the 7,700 Minnesotans who make more than $1 million a year.

Well, no.

The GOP refused to raise taxes.  Period.  Dayton chose to make it about “millionaires”, and before that “the rich”.  Had Dayton chosen to raise, say, the gas tax (like the DFL majority in 2009 did), a terribly regressive tax that squats all over working-class prosperity, the GOP would have opposed that, as well.

For the Times to turn the GOP’s opposition to a tax into “protecting millionaires” is a craven bit of rhetorical dishonesty.

Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, campaigned for office last year promising to raise taxes on high earners, so it was no surprise when he proposed a tax increase on families making more than $150,000 a year to help close a $5 billion budget gap. In negotiations with the Republican majority in the Legislature, he compromised and reduced the increase to those making $1 million or more, but Republicans are refusing to consider any income tax increase.

Note the rhetoric: Dayton keeping a campaign promise?  Good.  The GOP? Can’t be good, can it?

Like Republicans in Washington, they have the delusion that they can balance the budget entirely from cuts.

The Times’ “editorial” was apparently written by the MNDFL’s chair, Ken Martin.  The GOP budget is the biggest spending increase in Minnesota history.

The governor proposed more than $2 billion in cuts but refused to slash billions more from education, health care and public safety programs.

All of which the GOP compromised on, meeting Dayton much more than halfway.

The Legislature also wanted new abortion restrictions and a voter ID law that Mr. Dayton had already vetoed. When he said no, lawmakers allowed the fiscal year to end without a budget, and state government officially shut on July 1.

The Times apparently believes the GOP should “negotiate” like a Saturn dealer; start with their “final offer” and work backward from there.

Also unmentioned by “the Times” editorial writer: Dayton walked out of the negotiations every time.  The GOP Legislature was waiting in the Capitol, ready to negotiate and/or pass a “lights on” bill, to keep govermment running

More than 40 state agencies have closed, including the state parks over the July Fourth holiday. Courts and public safety agencies are operating, but essential services for the poor, like food pantries and child care subsidies, have evaporated. Many parents say they may have to quit their jobs if state-subsidized child care does not resume quickly. The shutdown will cost the state money, since many of the 22,000 laid-off workers will receive unemployment benefits and health insurance, while the treasury is unable to collect on tax audits, lottery tickets and park fees.

Unmentioned by the Times (or any of the Twin Cities media); the evidence is overwhelming that Governor Dayton rigged the shutdown to cause as much pain as possible, specifically to drive those dependent on state employment or services to try to push moderate Republicans into wobbling.

As painful as the closure may become, the governor is right not to yield to the extremist ideology the Republicans are pursuing in St. Paul, Washington and across the country.

“Extremist ideology”.

The GOP ran very openly on a platform of holding the line on taxes and spending.  Perhaps you remember the Tea Party – it was in all the papers, including the Times.

Extremist?  Governor Dayton won with 43% of the vote; the GOP majorities had, by definition, over 50% of the state’s voters pick them (since the third-party challenges were virtually nonexistant in legislative races in 2010).  Can a policy chosen by over half the voters be “extemist?”

I just finished watching former governor – as in, “not the governor anymore” – Arne Carlson on Channel 11’s morning show.  The former – as in, “hasn’t been elected in 17 years” – governor was promoting his “independent” budget commission.

I didn’t hear much; I was too busy yelling at the TV.  Having that smug, sanctimonous fop back on the TV still makes my wallet hurt.

But I do recall that his little spiel was clogged with references to “the way we used to do things in Minnesota”; code for “parties working together”.  As in “cooperation among elected officials, with no “extremists” hijacking the process to their ends”.

So what do we have here in Minnesota?

A legislative branch whose overwhelming majority agrees on a budget is being held up…

…by the Governor.

Is that the sort of “cooperation” that Carlson is talking about?

Or are his scruples purely partisan?

After spending millions of dollars upsetting the DFL machine, and then more on the campaign of toxic sleaze that put him in office by a whisker, it seems Mark Dayton really doesn’t want to do his job all that badly.

After rejecting a balanced Republican budget that not only lives within state revenue but also gave him most of his purported policy goals, Dayton first called for a “mediator”.

In other words, he called for a single lawyer to dictate what the state budget would be.

And now, he’s brought in a junta – a group of “experts” – to dictate what the budget should be.

Former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson and former Vice President Walter Mondale have assembled a six-member panel of experts to help resolve the state’s budget standoff, the two announced Tuesday.

The group “features” Arne “High Times” Carlson – whose only budgetary experience came during the prosperous, cha-cha nineties – and Walter Mondale, who was Jimmy Carter’s vice-president.

These two – the RINO and the hard-line DFLer – are joined by a dog’s breakfast of “experts”.

Any guess on what the “experts” have in common?

Two former legislators are on the panel — Republican Steve Dille and DFLer Wayne Simoneau.

Dille got a 55 from the Taxpayers League.  Simoneau was a DFLer – need I say more? –

It has two representatives of the business community — former Norwest Bank president Jim Campbell and Medtronic vice president Kris Johnson.

That’s Jim Campbell, whose recent political donations have been to DFLers, potemkin Republican Chuck Hagel, and a few Republicans back in the day when the parties were basically different shades of spendthrift, and Kristen Johnson, whose record seems to be Republican, which donations to McCain-Palin, Erik Paulsen and other Republicans.

The other two members are former state finance commissioners — John Gunyou, who served in the Carlson administration, and Jay Kiedrowski, who worked for DFLer Rudy Perpich.

That’s John Gunyou, who ran as Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s running mate in the primaries against Dayton last year – for the DFL nomination – “managed” budgets at a time when budgeting was a piece of cake since the good times were rolling, and has been beating the drums against conservative governance ever since he left office.

Speaking in Minneapolis’ City Hall, Carlson said he thought legislators and Gov. Mark Dayton needed the help.

“When the process loses the ability to be flexible to effect compromise, then you have to have an outside party,” said Carlson. “In business it might be some sort of mediation or arbitration, whatever it may be, but you need that kind of process to take place.”

Carlson said he’d like the panel to offer a settlement of some kind by the end of this week.

Let’s see – with six high-profile liberals (Mondale, Carlson, Gunyou, Kiedrowski, Schowalter and Campbell) and one apparently conservative (Johnson), what do you suppose that “settlement” is going to look like?

Like a “back to the Nineties” – a perfect accompaniment for Dayton’s “back to the Seventies” administration.

Mondale said he also worried that the fiscal debate in Washington could add fuel Minnesota’s budget crisis.

“I’m afraid that if we don’t reassert Minnesota’s ability to think and create in this crisis, that we’ll be overwhelmed by national pressures,” said Mondale.

Dear Carlson, Mondale et al:  we elected people to do our “creating” and “thinking”; a bare plurality got behind Dayton, while a clear majority put the GOP legislature in office.

You want to play governor again?  Get yourselves elected.

Go away.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Governor Dayton wants another $2 billion, supposedly paid for by the richest 2%.

Nonsense, never happen.

The rich are rich, they’re not stupid. They won’t voluntarily hand over an extra $2 billion – they’ll hire tax lawyers and CPAs to hide their money. Worst case, the rich will move out of state and take their businesses with them.

How many of those rich people live within easy driving distance of Wisconsin, with its tax-cutting administration?

So if the Governor gets his way there won’t be any extra tax revenue but we already will have spent the money. How will we pay for it?

If the rich won’t pay, and the poor can’t pay, who will pay? You know who.

That’s been the fact all along; since taxes on “the rich” never generate what the politicians think they will, but spending always meets projections, the taxes will inevitably filter down to the middle class.

Doakes:

There are 5 million people in Minnesota. There are about 2 million tax returns filed but nearly half of them pay no tax at all (they only file to get a refund) and of the rest, a bunch are “married filing jointly” in which there basically is one earner. There are probably 1 million actual middle-class taxpayers in Minnesota.

$2 billion is 2,000 million. That’s two thousand dollars per taxpayer. Your taxes will go up $2,000 per year, call it $160 per month or $40 per week. A dollar an hour more taxes.

Mark Dayton shut down the entire state government, holding everyone hostage, for a dollar-an-hour pay cut.

But let’s be honest; if Dayton gets his way, this is just the beginning.  The auto-pilot increases will continue; it’ll be another six billion dollar “deficit” in 2013; the “rich” will have been tapped out (or left); there’s another buck or two or three an hour.

What’s that you say, it’s not a pay cut? Hey, if your paycheck is smaller by a dollar-an-hour, does it matter whether your boss cut your pay or the government took more taxes? Either way, you’re skipping one tankful of gas, skipping one restaurant meal with your family, skipping one grocery shopping trip, skipping $40 every week for the rest of your life.

Maybe the Governor truly believes we’ll be happy to pay for a better Minnesota. Maybe he thinks his union buddies are clamoring for a pay cut. “Me! Me! Pick me! I want my taxes raised. I want less money in my pocket. Raise my taxes, please!” Personally, I have not heard one single Minnesotan demanding to pay more in taxes out of their own pockets. Raise taxes on other people – sure; but not on me. It’s easy to spend other people’s money. But when it’s your own? Not so much.

But that, of course, has been behind the DFL’s house of political cards for the past forty years – forcing other people to pay for your goodies.

The Governor is holding hostage every citizen in this state, until we accept a dollar-an-hour pay cut.

A dollar-an-hour pay cut.

On top of the cut Obama’s going to give you.

How many of you are “happy to pay?”

The Minnesota Legislative GOP, in the waning hours last Thursday before the shutdown, introduced a “lights-on” bill – a bill that would provide a couple of weeks of short-term funding to keep state services going to those who need them, and are genuinely dependent on the state.

Governor Dayton dismissed the bill as a “stunt”.

Here’s Governor Dayton, not “stunting”:

At the Alexandra House, a women’s shelter in Blaine that depends on state money, executive director Connie Moore has begun spending the shelter’s savings to keep the doors open. The desperate move won’t buy much time.

“We’re gambling right now,” Moore said. “If we don’t get reimbursed, the impact will be long-lived.”

The GOP’s “stunt” would have kept Alexandra House operating and solvent.

Governor Dayton tossed that aside to protect…AFSCME’s ability to retire at 55 with full taxpayer support?

In St. Paul, Rhonda Nelson, who is deaf and blnd, just lost her eyes and ears to the world. The aide who helps her go grocery shopping, to doctor’s appointments, to the post office and other appointments has been deemed non-essential in the state government shutdown.

For someone who already spends most of her days in dark silence, losing the service is heartbreaking. “I’m basically stuck at home,” said Nelson, 65, a former disabilities educator from St. Paul, speaking through an interpreter.

The GOP’s “stunt” would have kept Ms. Nelson’s eyes and ears, as it were, functioning.

Dayton sacrificed Ms. Nelson’s eyes and ears to…what?  Chastise entrepreneurs.

Programs that help get families out of homeless shelters, allow single parents to stay in the workforce, provide safe havens for battered women and allow those with disabilities to enjoy everyday life have suddenly lost funding and are teetering on the edge of closure.

The GOP’s “stunt” would have fixed that, while the negotiations continued.

Dayton couldn’t have that.

To: State Employees (who find themselves on-camera with one of the local TV stations that are devoting slavering coverage to the (DFL side of the) shutdown.

From: Mitch Berg, schnook taxpayer.

Re: Priorities

Dear state employees:

Sorry about the whole shutdown situation. You do realize that Governor Dayton could end this whole thing at any moment by accepting the balanced GOP budget that’s been on the table for almost two months.

But I’d like to talk with those of you that’ve been on camera with Channels 4, 5, 9 and 11 on every single newscast for the past couple of weeks, asking how you plan on getting by without a state paycheck.

“Prioritize!”, some of you say. “Gotta pay the rent and the mortgage”, you intone.

“It’s tough out there”, one of you actually said.

Just  a quick question, asked with all due respect; what do you think all of us in the private sector have been doing?

That is all.

Ramco Judge Kathleen Gearin has ruled on “critical services” for a potential upcoming government shutdown:

Ramsey County Judge Kathleen Gearin’s ruling came Wednesday, just two days before a state government shutdown would begin. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature would have to agree on a budget before Friday to avoid the scenario.

Dayton and top lawmakers were sequestered in the governor’s office on their sixth straight day of budget negotiations. They have yet to report a breakthrough in a drawn-out dispute over the level of spending in the next two-year budget and how to pay for it. The state faces a projected $5 billion deficit in the two-year budget cycle, which begins on Friday.

Dayton wants to raise income taxes on high earners, while Republicans insist on no new revenue.

One wonders if MPR’s reporter – Elizabeth Dunbar – is aware of the distinction between “no new taxes” and “no new revenue”.  New revenue happens when people become more prosperous and pay more in taxes.

I’ll chalk it up to carelessness, and continue.

Gearin said state payments to school districts and local governments should continue even if there’s no budget by Friday. She said the state must also fulfill its obligations to the federal government and continue to administer those programs, including food stamps, welfare payments and Medicaid.

“The failure to properly fund critical core functions of the executive and legislative branches will violate the constitutional rights of the citizens of Minnesota,” Gearin wrote in a 19-page written order.

But Gearin emphasized that state payments during a shutdown should be limited “only the most critical functions of government involving the security, benefit, and protection of the people.”

What a radical notion; limiting government to what it’s actually needed for.

I need to read the order (and so do you, so go and do it) more completely, but it’s hard to read what I’ve seen so far as anything but at least a qualified victory for the MNGOP.  Mark Dayton’s attempt to push all the pain of this shutdown onto this state’s most vulnerable residents – which we’ve been documenting for weeks, although the mainstream media can’t seem to be bothered – has been rebuffed for now.

With government doing the things it actually needs to be (or should be) doing, I think Governor Dayton just got chopped off at the knees.

SCENE:  The Emergency Room at Regions Hospital in Saint Paul.  It’s July 5.  Mrs. JACKIE SZCZYMCZYK, sits in the waiting room, surrounded by other people waiting for results.  She appears distraught.  A BYSTANDER, sitting next to SZCZYMCZYK, is holding a hankie on a cut foot.

BYSTANDER (to SZCZYMCZYK):  “What are you here for?”

SZCZYMCZYK:  My husband – he…he…(sobs)…he choked on a buffalo wing.

BYSTANDER: Owwie.

SZCZYMCZYK: While he had a lit bottle rocket in his butt.

BYSTANDER:  Um…oh.  Wow.  My.

SZCZYMCZYK: It was all so trivial – such a stupid thing, really – but he fell over and cut his toe on a piece of glass from the bottle he’d broke over his head.

BYSTANDER: Oh, I’m sorry.  Well, none of it sounds life-threatening…

SZCZYMCZYK: It wasn’t supposed to be.  But it took us an extra half hour to get to the hosital, what with the Stillwater Lift Bridge being out because of the budget shutdown.

BYSTANDER:  But – wait.  I’m sorry, but I heard that Governor Walker of Wisconsin offered to pay the bill to keep the bridge open.

SZCZYMCZYK: Oh, my Chuck is a teamster.  He never woulda had nothing to do with Walker.  But why isn’t the bridge open, then?

BYSTANDER: Governor Dayton turned it down.  He wanted to make sure the bridge shut down.  No matter what.

SZCZYMCZYK: Well…

(DOCTOR MANOJ BALAKRISHNAN enters the scene, along with nurse Excedrine MCCARTHY, RN)

BALAKRISHNAN: Mrs. Szczymczyk?

SZCZYMCZYK: Yes?

BALAKRISHNAN:  I’m Doctor Balakrishnan.  I’m afraid your husband is dead.  There was nothing we could do…

SZCZYMCZYK:  (Breaks down crying).

BALAKRISHNAN: If only he could have gotten here half an hour earlier, I coulda done sometihng….

(SZCZYMCZYK breaks up in squalls of crying).

PANJAKRISHNAN: There was nothing we could have done.  I’m so sorry.  That extra half hour was a matter of life and death.

MCCARTHY: “By the way, on behalf of the nurse’s union, I hope you’re happy to pay for a Better Minnesota!”.

SZCYMCZYK: Huh?

MCCARTHY: “Way to stick it to that top two percent, sister!”

———-

Well, OK.  I usually play these mock dramedies for yuks.  There are usually plenty of yuks in the workings of the DFL mind.  But a death in an emergency room isn’t funny.

So why is Mark Dayton – and only Mark Dayton – insisting on virtually guaranteeing it?

Scott Walker offered to keep the bridge open.  Stillwater businesses offered to keep the bridge open.  Dayton spurned both offers…

…and, for that matter, the Legislative GOP passed a balanced budget that would have taken care of all of this.  And Dayton vetoed that – them, actually – for what?

…to protect a tax hike that is utterly meaningless, except as a way to try to dictate what’s on Minnesota’s moral conscience?

We know what his priorities are.